I am very close to finding God.
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What Happens When the Wire Snaps?
What kept nagging at me -- after the rush of religion and feeling like I had found a church and a faith I could work into my own belief system -- was the ultimate question of the Divinity of Jesus.
Some Unorganized Thoughts About Riots and Race
We can't say that all lives matter until we start treating all lives as if they all mattered. As if each was the most precious resource we have. As if losing one of us is losing all of us. “Oh,” a professor says in the play W;t, “it’s an allegory of the soul!” And it is.
Interlude: Monologue for a Gay Man
[Spotlight on an empty stage. A gay man in his late 40s walks up to the microphone.]
What Happens When Jesus is Racist?: The Syrophoenician Woman
We are spoiled for choice when it comes to reckoning with Jesus of Nazareth. For atheists, he was just another Jewish apocalyptic preacher. (I think there was a time when "Did Jesus exist?" made the rounds as a question and almost all historians of the Ancient Near East (ANE) agree that a man named Jesus actually existed; the miracle stories they leave to theology.) For believers, that flow chart branches a lot. Was he wholly divine? Was he wholly human? Was he both? Was Jesus also God, or was Jesus next to God? Your New Testament will be no help on this by the way.
Are Jesus and Christ the Same Person?
Maybe! But also maybe not! Let's dig into the differences. (They definitely are two distinct things.)
The Skull of Mary Magdalene, Who Wasn’t a Prostitute, Blame Gregory, He Got it Wrong
If you're visiting the South of France, you'll of course want to stop by Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume. They have the skull of Mary Magdalene.
How Necessary Was the Crucifixion, or, How I Am Maybe Not a Christian
Last night I mentioned to Zach that I'm sort of "meh" about the crucifixion. That came out terribly wrong.
On the Origin of Navels and Other Things
Did Adam and Eve have navels is a silly question. But this navel question has troubled theologians forever, because each question comes value-packed with a bunch of other questions, too.
Abraham & Isaac
Once upon a time, in the Bible, God and Abraham were having a conversation. God was explaining how he needed to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham was explaining how he shouldn’t do it.
Souls, Purgatory, and Ghosts (with an explanation of Plumber Porn as a chaser)
Do you have a soul? We have to start with what a soul is, which should be easy, it's only four letters, but the thing is, it's not easy, even if it were three letters. We don't have a unilateral definition of the soul. We don't know where the soul "lives" in the body. We don't know if the soul is separate from our earthly experiences. All we have is a hopeful maybe.
